Toward an Acoustemology of Muslim Citizenship in Kenya

The problem of Muslim belonging in predominantly Christian Kenya has taken on added urgency for academics and policymakers in recent years, in light of attacks by global Islamist militants on Kenyan soil, a massive influx of Muslim migrants from Somalia, and struggles over the future of the country’s Islamic courts system, among other factors. In my sound-centered research on social identification on Kenya’s Muslim- dominated coastal strip, I explore the contemporary conditions of Muslim citizenship—in the broad sense of social belonging within the nation-state—by taking an ethnographic ear to contestations over public space that happen in relation to public sound. My method- ological approach is grounded in Steven Feld’s (1996) acoustemology of place, which he describes as an inves- tigation into sounding and listening as ways of experi- encing and knowing physical and social environments. Here I lay out some basic coordinates for an acouste- mology of spatial politics and Muslim belonging on the Kenyan coast.